Matt Smith, Steven Yeun, more at Comic-Con: Nipple hair & fan fiction

Obviously, here at Digital Spy we love a good old slice of genre TV, so our recent trip to San Diego's Comic-Con was basically all of our fantasies wrapped into one. And nothing really summed that up better than the Entertainment Weekly Brave New Warriors panel...

The event saw Doctor Who's Matt Smith, Game of Thrones' Kit Harington, The Walking Dead's Steven Yeun, Teen Wolf's Tyler Posey and Grimm's David Giuntoli get together for a chinwag about their shows, so read on for the highlights from the panel...

On being offered their roles...Matt admitted it was "strange" being offered the role of the Doctor, especially given his age ("[People were like,] 'He's like 9!'") but he just tries to "stay true to his creative instincts". Kit dubbed the Game of Thrones pilot the "most bizarre thing" he's ever read, while Steven joked that he was "just happy to have a job" (though obviously it's turned into more). Tyler was especially gushing, speaking about having to fill Michael J Fox's shoes but describing his role as "by far the coolest thing" he's ever done in his life, while David said he felt "nervous" but "very blessed".

On the screams for a certain Teen Wolf star...On more than one occasion (seriously), David couldn't help himself: "I just wanted to speak for the fans, Tyler, and say you are so sexy!" (To be fair, a fan later described Tyler as the "sexiest, gnarliest wolf alive".)

On the downsides of having a role in a genre show...The fan fiction. "It's not a downside, but it gets pretty gnarly," Tyler admitted, while Steven expressed surprise about the "random" nature of it: "It's like Darryl and Glenn fan fiction... It's interesting."

On Steven's character Glenn in the Walking Dead comics...Glenn has a "tough road" in the comics (no spoilers) but Steven's trying not to pay too much attention to all that (although he did admit he was worried about messing it up, because he would have hated one of his favorite characters to be destroyed). As for Glenn: "The show is kind of doing its own thing as well, so I'm just trying to do the best job I can."

On Kit reading the Game of Thrones novels...Turns out he read them all straight away because he "wanted to know exactly what happened"! So much for being surprised... Still, like Steven, he admitted to the "nervewracking" nature of taking on a beloved character. "As an actor you have to separate yourself from people's expectations and just take the character you've read and just trust the way you read them is the way people see them," he said. "It's also great for us that we get to revisit these characters year after year and grow with them and develop them over time."

On Matt deciding to leave Doctor Who..."When you've gotta go, you've gotta go," Matt said, though he did admit that he's going to miss the show (and Comic-Con, too!) "It wasn't an easy decision to come to," he added. "You can't play it forever." Matt also expressed certainty that his replacement will be "someone amazing": "They'll get someone brilliant to do it, they really will. That's the great thing about the show - it continues and the strength of it survives and it'll get better and it'll get bigger and it'll keep going and you'll forget about me." He also vowed to keep watching the show: "I'm a little cog in a big wheel."

On the unsexiest part of their job...The mornings! Oh, and how everyone's always watching you. "If you have something hanging out your nose, everyone's watching you all the time," David confessed. "You can't look cool or whatever." Tyler agreed strongly: "Boogers suck." Actually, Tyler also opened up about his "nipple hair": "I never shave it before a shirtless scene, so usually one of the executive producers shaves it for me. I don't know why, he just wants to." As for Steven? "There are lots of bugs in Atlanta, and they like the warmest parts of bodies..." (yeah, no more info needed there, thanks Steven.)

The unsexiness didn't stop there, either - Kit blushingly recounted his sex scene, aka "the most humiliating experience of his life". He'd broken his ankle, so had to hobble on to set naked on crutches "not being able to hide anything". "Vanity pouches are no sexy things," he added. As for Matt? "The unsexiest thing? Blimey. Karen Gillan in the mornings is tough." Calm down - he was only joking! Luckily for Matt, Doctor Who's not "massively sexy" so the worst thing he could come up with was learning lines. Really.

On their previous work embarrassments...Tyler's pretty proud of everything... except his recreations of Jackass with his little brother ("I would do the more gross stuff... Stuff to do with my butt, definitely."). As for David, he was devastated at the time not to land a commercial when he first got to LA, but now he's not too upset. Why? "My first line was, 'I have genital herpes', and then she would say, 'And I don't', and then we would both say, 'And we want to keep it that way'."

On their favorite villains...Tyler named the Kanima from Teen Wolf, though it wasn't all scary: "It wasn't mostly CGI - it was a suit that the guy had to wear, and he had to wear it every day for 17 hours sometimes, and it got really stinky." David loved his "epic, all out, no holds barred" fight with co-star Sasha Roiz: "He kicked me so hard it looked like a horse had kicked me in the thigh. It was just Sasha's big shoe." Kit knows that well: "I've just done a film with Sasha and he kicked me elsewhere. Many times." Steven obviously named Merle, while Matt plumped for the Weeping Angels.

On what they see of themselves in their characters...Tyler said he likes to think he's as much of a "good guy" as Scott: "He wants the best for everybody - his friends, his loved ones, his family - and I can definitely relate to that. And the werewolf aspect, of course." Steven named Glenn's resilience ("Lord knows I've had a lot of embarrassing moments for myself throughout my entire life"), while David said he likes to think he'd put himself in harm's way for his loved ones like Nick. As for Kit? "I can be quite emo at times. Jon's a bit emo. If Jon had an iPod, it would have exactly the same type of music as me." And Matt named the Doctor's clumsiness - though he added: "He's a thousand-year-old Time Lord... He's just a much better creature than I am." Oh, and: "I can time travel. I just haven't told anyone."

On David's character Nick trusting the Captain on Grimm..."Oh, I do not trust the Captain. My character and the Captain, I always think of that picture of like FDR and Churchill and then Stalin - they're working together for a little bit! We have to work together but we're not going to be pals any time soon. He did try to sleep with my fiancée, and he also tried to kill my aunt..."

On their creepiest fan experiences...Matt said his wasn't creepy, but strange - he got home and discovered a 12-year-old girl hiding in his bush. "She sort of jumped out, like, 'Don't worry, I'm not crazy' and I just thought in my head, 'You should be at home!' and I took her home. She was a cool kid, though." Kit said he gets some "pictures and things" that could be described as creepy, and Tyler got followed by two girls while he was driving to see his girlfriend. As for David, he revealed that someone slipped a note under his door that said: "Big fan."

Elsewhere, Steven told a funny story about a fan who regretted her approach: "She saw me from maybe a block away and she started zombie walking towards me - and, like, a whole block! It was the greatest thing because I could see her doing it and halfway through - I could see it in her face - she was like, 'I regret this decision. I'm going to fight the good fight and continue on'. The best part is she gets up to me and goes, 'Argghhh I'm so sorry, I'm humiliated'. She was really a sweetheart."

On their dream Comic-Con costumes...Tyler named Luigi, Kit plumped for Harry Potter and David said he'd go as an Angry Bird. But Matt revealed he'd already dressed up: "I did it today as Bart Simpson, and I went to the Doctor Who bit and tried to talk to lots of people. They were like, 'Who's the weird Bart Simpson?'"

On how they'd like their characters to die..."It has to be big... it has to make me look cool," David said, adding that Nick has a treasure trove of weapons: "It's got to be one of those big beheadings with a big thing." Tyler says being beheaded would be cool, but for it to fit his character, he'd have to go out saving someone - aww. Steven's thought this one through: "It would be cool if I was riding a motorcycle and then while I was riding the motorcycle I jump off a ramp and kill 30 walkers and then an explosion happens and my heart can't take the stress of how awesome it was, and then I land and I park the bike - I make sure to put the kickstand on - dig my own grave, and just fall asleep forever."

Kit was less dramatic - "Maybe on a Sunday afternoon, peacefully, 85 years old, just resting his head gently on the side of a big iron chair" (hello!) - while Matt chose this moment to tease the Who fans. "It would be cool if I was in the TARDIS and I laid out and I put my arms out and loads of golden light poured out of my hands and my face. And then I turn into a woman." Cheeky!